Our History
HOW IT STARTED
Barkley Plastics has traded in the West Midlands since 1965. The company delivers plastic injection moulding solutions to organisations across the globe. Supporting a wide-range of market sectors from automotive to retail and delivers a total solution to its clients from concept to completion.
The History of Barkley Plastics started in 1963 when John Barkley placed an advert in the Birmingham Evening Mail that asked for four toolmakers to help start a new company in Hallam Street in Balsall Heath. This was spotted by four young Lucas toolmakers; Maurice Harwood, Bob Fisher, Bob Chittleborough and Tony Challinor. Over the next eighteen months they continued to work at Lucas and did the evening shift at “John Barkley Plastics”. They concentrated on injection moulding tools as they had done at Lucas.
They had a lathe, a couple of milling machines and a surface grinder, they soon realised they needed an injection moulding machine to try the tooling out on. This was the start of things to come…
It was now 1965 and it was decided that the company needed full time commitment, so they all left Lucas to pursue their dreams of having their own company; the official birth of the business. Over the next three years this proved to be a good decision and their main customer became Lucas! They manufactured hundreds of tools for lucas mainly for front and rear car lamps from Mini to Rolls Royce some of these tools are still here and produce mouldings for the classic car companies today.
John Barkley’s health declined in 1968 and he died. It was shortly after this it was decided to move to new bigger premises and the Highgate Street premises were purchased. It was decided to change the name of the company but they decided to keep the name Barkley as it appeared on the first page of the telephone book!
New tool room and car park built.
Mould shop extended by 20,000 sq ft by purchasing next door premises.
